The lightsaber of Darth Vader holds great potency, whether it’s as iconic imagery in the Star Wars franchise, or as an actual artifact of great power and importance in the Star Wars galaxy itself. This has been true for both the new and old canons, but now the former has chronicled how Vader gained his red lightsaber,…

Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's round up of all the delightful toys hurtling around the internet demanding our attention this week. This time, everything is giant! (Except for the very tiny lightsaber remote!) But apart from that, if you want large robots, large dinosaurs, and large Jason Momoas, we’ve got the toys…

The final marketing blitz for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which I sincerely hope is just 160 minutes of training sequences, is about to begin. In the meantime, we’ve got a couple tantalizing teasers to whet our space appetites.

Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber is no more—at least namewise, that is. It turns out, internally at Lucasfilm, the marketing team no longer views this weapon as one owned by the fallen Jedi... but instead, it’s now officially Rey’s weapon of choice.

It’s time to face the facts: lightsabers aren’t real, and they’re simply not going to exist in your lifetime. The closest you can get to realizing your Jedi fantasies is through this excellent tutorial by Mathieu Stern showing you how to properly fake a lightsaber using Photoshop.

Using a lightsaber as a flashlight is a bad idea, given you can easily lop someone’s arm off while flailing around in the dark. But ThinkGeek’s new five-and-a-half-foot tall lightsaber floor lamp is a much safer way to find your way around in the dark, since it only relies on LEDs to glow.

Every kid wants one, but lightsabers have to be one of the most dangerous items in the Star Wars universe. A kid at the controls of the Death Star would cause less damage than one swinging around a laser sword. This immersion blender, featuring Vader’s lightsaber’s hilt for its handle, isn’t much safer, but at least…

Seemingly every Fast & Furious movie builds up to one moment: Vin Diesel fighting the big bad guy. Usually, that big bad guy is also, well, big—someone like the Rock or Jason Statham. And as cool as that moment usually is, a new video proves one word can make it so much better: lightsabers.

When Disney opens 14-acre Star Wars areas in California and Florida in the coming years, there’s no doubt everything will be state of the art. In fact, a new patent suggests they’ve figured out a new way to make lightsabers work in the real world, but maybe not in the way you think.

They’ll make your home’s front entryway look like the aftermath of a ferocious lightsaber battle, but these clever wall hooks that ThinkGeek created are just an illusion—no drywall was harmed in their making.

The biggest regret of my life right now is not being as smart as these two geniuses, who battled out Roman candle fireworks with lightsabers like they were Jedi knights. Sure, I’d totally get lit up and smoked and would miss more blasts than I would hit, but the feeling of shielding yourself with just your lightsaber…

When spending $1,250 on a prop lightsaber, you want to be absolutely sure you’re buying as accurate a replica as possible. So instead of licensing designs and schematics to third-party companies, Disney and Lucasfilm have launched its own line of prop replicas that promise to be the most accurate ever created.

You’re supposed to use them for lazily floating around a pool on a hot summer’s day, but in no time at all those long foam noodles quickly become a sword you can safely swing around like a samurai, ninja, and now a Jedi, thanks to Swim Ways.

Think you’re the biggest Star Wars fan in our neck of the galaxy? Here’s your chance to prove it once and for all, because only the most loyal of Star Wars devotees will be willing to spend just shy of $25,000 for a lightsaber fountain pen and a nifty floating display stand.

Here’s a beautiful flyby video of the Herbig-Haro object called HH 24 courtesy of the Hubble. We saw the absolutely striking still image earlier which shows a newborn star shooting out twin jets into space. To learn more about this awesome phenomenon, read here.